Ford vows to bounce back

Ford has vowed to fight back in Jordan after a tough weekend in Mexico saw Mikko Hirvonen lose his lead in the World Rally Championship standings.

Hirvonen went into the event leading the title race following his win in Sweden, but struggled through the opening day due to running first on the road.

Despite an improved road position on the second and third days, Hirvonen was unable to match the pace of the Citroen drivers ahead and had to settle for fourth place, dropping him behind rally winner Sebastien Loeb in the championship standings.

"It was a difficult weekend and after winning in Sweden I hoped for a better result here," he said. "I'm happy that we scored good points for the team, but I made too many mistakes with my driving. I never really found a good rhythm and I felt I couldn't push as hard as I wanted to. When I tried, the car ended up sliding wide and I dropped even more time. I tried lots of different things but I never really found the answer.

"I never had the pace to fight for the win, so taking all that into account, I have to be happy with a solid finish. It's important to keep the points ticking over so early in the season and that's what we ended up doing here."

Hirvonen was aided in his run to fourth by team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala slowing on the final test proper, with his fifth place helping Ford to remain ahead of Citroen in the manufacturers' championship.

However, team boss Malcolm Wilson admitted there were questions to be answered about why the pair hadn't been able to challenge for victory.

"We lost too much time on the first day but we don't know why,” he said. “We need to find the reasons, and we will, but at the moment it's a bit confusing. There's a lot of work to do but we'll dig deep and come back fighting.

“Mikko couldn't find his confidence on the opening day when he was first on the road. Jari-Matti did a great job for the team, helping Mikko and finishing ahead of our rivals' second cars. That's exactly what we asked of him at the start of the season."

Join
the conversation - Add your comment

Although the administrators and moderators of this website will attempt to keep all objectionable comments off these pages, it is impossible for us to review all messages. All messages express the views of the poster, and neither Crash Media Group nor Crash.Net will be held responsible for the content of any message. We do not vouch for or warrant the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any message, and are not responsible for the contents of any message. If you find a message objectionable, please contact us and inform us of the problem or use the [report] function next to the offending post. Any message that does not conform with the policy of this service can be edited or removed with immediate effect.

Malcolm should have swallowed his pride and offered Petter a decent deal for the last two rallies of 2009. Then his drivers wouldn't have had another C4 to get past in 2010.
Bizarre really, he has a perfectly good Focus at his disposal which keeps finishing 7th, which could have been offered to Petter. If I was Mr Ford and Mr Stobart I'd wonder why the h3ll that was ? It could have been generating far greater, positive headlines and attention, and getting in amongst the C4's, but it's not is it ? As I say, bizarre

This was Bizarre to say the least.
Malcolm admitted to constantly being in touch with Dovenby Hall analising Data to see where they could improve the Focus, whatever the problem was it wasnt with the cars themselves.
Jari Matti and Mikko had a substancial pre event test to decide the setup, yet it was Henning that seemed to dial his car in the best almost from the get go.
After day 1 the BP boys coppied Hennings setup and the cars were immediately much faster.
I was very suprised to see things this way round, Im not confident about Jordan as there is no Tarmac expert to perfect the setup for there. Citroen have 3, maybe 4 if you include Raikonnen.
It aint looking good now